We are all Pawns #16 - Once Upon a Time
Added 2023-12-06 14:00:09 +0000 UTCWe are all Pawns podcast nears the end. A familiar face returns to try and break #6, and only one can be left standing. Vera nd I take a look at the penultimate episode of The Prisoner in one of my favorite stories in the Prisoner... and we get ready for THAT finale...
Comments
I wish you and Vera could have touched on how this whole series, and the 2-part finale in particular, are very deeply informed by Jungian psychology and the growing psychedelic movement in the 1960's. Particularly psychedelics as utilized by cold war era intelligence agencies. You can view the entirety of the show through this lens, but in this episode specifically, Number 6 is given the equivalent of a high dose of a psychedelic substance. He's mentally reduced to a child, and Number 2 assumes a father figure role, in a very psychologically accurate form of brainwashing. Also, I've always thought this episode very clearly answers the question of why Number 6 resigned. He was ordered to kill someone, and refused to do it. This was touched upon at a few points throughout the series, but I really think it's spelled out more specifically here. When he served in the war, Number 6 had to kill, and it was traumatic for him. He became a spy to, in a sense, rise above the forces of government. But when he was ordered to assassinate someone, he was retraumatized, and in a very dysregulated state he resigned.
Melissa DeLong
2023-12-14 16:55:44 +0000 UTCI did love the ending episode the second time through, but the first time my reaction was effectively this: https://youtu.be/P8SKQ46ezbE?si=yqD15s_AQVr0rlEj
Alana Halper
2023-12-13 02:08:46 +0000 UTC
